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Straight Up Screaming Through The Wetlands – Chapter Thirteen

Thirteen is a magic number, folks. This is THE chapter. The one that I use to describe to people how gross this book is. You’re in for an extra special treat today.

The chapter starts light. As light as this book gets, anyway.

And so I come to one of my biggest hobbies. Popping zits.

I fucking love this book.

I’ve noticed a big blackhead in Robin’s ear. […] I practically grabbed Robin’s ear. I could barely control myself. But a lot of people aren’t cool with that. when you just pop their zit without asking.

I’m not quite sure how I’d react if someone just straight up reached over and popped a zit on my face. I can’t say I haven’t had the urge to do it to other people. I once dated a guy that used to get me to pop the zits on his back all the time, and I found it immensely satisfying. But yeah. Never without being invited.

I clench the blackhead on my upper arm between the thumb and pointer finger of my left hand and, with a squeeze, out comes the worm.

It goes directly from my thumb into my mouth.

Is it bad that I would find her eating this kind of worm less gross?

Ugh. Here we go. Helen talks about how there’s a drop of blood left over from the blackhead (how fucking hard did you squeeze??) and then thinks about how that’s like when she shaves her legs by herself. She gets goosebumps and is so careless with her razor that she cuts open every bump while shaving. Then, when she puts her nylons on, they create stripes when she pulls them up her legs like patterned tights.

Wearing nylons over my bloody legs has another advantage, too. I like to eat my scabs.

Why am I reading this book again? I CAN’T LOOK AWAY.

[…] and new scabs form. Then, once they’ve hardened, I can pick them off and eat them.

Tastes almost as good as sleepy seeds. The snack brought by the sandman and left in the corner of your eye closest to your nose.

If this were CinemaSins, I’d remove a sin for ‘sleepy seeds’, because that’s hilariously disgusting. Hisgusting? Helen talks about how she starts getting ingrown hairs from treating her skin so badly. She lets them fester and get infected, and then this happens:

First I stick a needle into the infected lump and squeeze out the pus. From my fingertip into my mouth with that. Then it’s the hair’s turn.

You are so fucking gross.

She randomly notices a magpie outside, and talks about how they steal eggs from other birds and slurp the insides out. She remembers when she was a kid, they used to chant “go climb a pole, you egg hole”, which doesn’t make any fucking sense, but whatever. Is this a German saying? She doesn’t know what it means, but of course she has a theory that she acted out once with her friend Kanell, the guy that shaves her.

The pussy was the hole, obviously.

Into it an egg. For egg hole.

Why? How does that even make sense, that an egg hole is a vagina? Your logic is flawed, Helen!

Sexy.

At first we tried a raw egg. But it broke in Kanell’s hand at the entrance to the pussy. The pieces of shell didn’t cut me or anything. It’s just that everything was covered in goop, and it was cold.

Imagining the feel of a raw egg on my girl junk is making me shudder.

They decide it would be easier to boil the egg first. I really hope that they let it cool first.

And inserted it. So I finally had the egg hole I’d always imagined from this playground rhyme.

Since then it’s been our inside secret. In the most literal sense of the phrase.

I’m trying to imagine what kind of guy Kanell is. Because I can’t imagine any dude being especially receptive to a girl going ‘hey, since I was a kid I’ve always wanted to put an egg in my pussy’. Also, why did she need him to do it for her? Why didn’t she do it herself? She eats her own bodily fluids but she can’t shove an egg inside herself? Am I reading too much into this?

She talks about the other thing she wants to ask Kanell to do, and that’s to trace her lymph nodes in her groin with a sharpie to ‘accentuate them’. Whatever, Helen, I’m sure he’ll do it, if he’s down with shoving eggs inside you then I’m sure he won’t mind drawing on you with permanent marker.

She notices the magpie is now fighting with another one, and thinks about how weird it is that people think they’re evil birds because they eat the young of other birds, but we humans eat the young of all animals. Then Robin strolls by the birds with a female nurse and Helen gets all jealous.

I feel a claim to him just because he’s taken a picture of my wounded ass and I gave him a titillating lecture about modifying my underwear. And because the nurse can walk and I can’t.

At least she admits that she’s jealous. She decides that she can walk, just very slow, and wants to go to the cafeteria. For coffee, of all things.

Good, Helen, do something normal. Don’t think anymore about Robin and his fuck-pie or about my parents in a bed boning each other.

Yes, please, let’s not think about that.

Pictured: Robin’s fuck-pie.

Coffee always makes me have to go to the bathroom. I’d like to secretly have a bowel movement, without telling anyone here. Just for me. Just so I know I still can and that I haven’t grown together and sealed shut. I won’t tell anyone. That way I can still use this venue to try to bring my parents together. That way the things that are supposed to be together will grow together.

Yay, instead of parents boning let’s think about taking a shit. Whoo.

She decides to actually put something on so that her ass won’t be hanging out all over the hospital, but doesn’t want to try to attempt pants for fear that bending over will stretch her too much. She decides on using her bed sheet as a toga.

This is fine for walking around a hospital. The two ass-piss stains could have been caused by something else. They could be the result of my drooling on the sheet while sucking on a Werther’s Original. Very believable, Helen. Nobody’s going to ask you about it. People aren’t like that. They don’t want to know.

At least she can acknowledge that normal people don’t want to know about her ass piss.

She briefly wonders if she’s allowed to be walking around, but then decides she doesn’t care and starts to slowly make her way down the hallway.

There are bad religious paintings hung all over the place. The nurses probably put them up to please their parents. They all end up here sooner or later. The parents.

LOL.

Helen gets to the glass door towards the elevators and realizes that she forgot money. She shuffles her way back to her room.

My memory’s gone to shit. In any event, I’ve got money now. I hold it in my hand as I walk. They don’t make sheets with pockets yet.

You know, I would never want to be within twenty feet of Helen, but I’m glad that this character exists. Because Charlotte Roche makes me fucking laugh.

Beyond is a whole new world. Here different diseases mingle. Ass patients and ass nurses aren’t the only ones out and about.

Seriously, her inner monologue, while sometimes abhorrent, is entertaining. And I love that even Helen shuffling along a hallway to the cafeteria can be taken in through her eyes and made interesting somehow.

She notices an old lady with a serious bunion walk by, and then reflects that she knows all about bunions because everyone in her family has them on their big toe. She admires the old woman’s ‘spider veins’, and then reaches the elevator. She gets in alone.

Here’s a cute kitten. Hang in there.

I use the ride down to hoist up my toga with the hand holding my money and pull out my homemade tampon with the other hand. Bloody and slimy as it is, I’ll put it near the panel of buttons, the most scrutinized place in this moving crate. […] [I] balance the bloody, sticky lump right int he middle of it. Success.

NO.

The doors open and two men are standing there. Perfect. […] I greet them, beaming with joy. “Good day, gentlemen.”

And walk out with perfect posture.

You are a horrible, terrible, no good person, Helen.

There’s no way they’ll clean it up themselves. They’ll never figure out that it’s just harmless menstrual blood. It looks like something that fell out of a wound. You can’t even recognize that it’s gauze. Soaked with blood as it is. It could even be a piece of flesh. Human flesh.

Harmless menstrual blood? No matter what kind of blood it is, it’s fucking gross, and I think they’d be just as disgusted if they knew it was a homemade tampon instead of a hunk of flesh. She fantasizes about how a nurse will be called to come and pick it up.

Then my masterpiece will end up with the medical waste.

I really hope so. I hope it gets dealt with quickly and not too many people need to be traumatized by this. Fucking gross.

Don’t worry friends, it’s not over yet.

The bills have in the meantime been passed between both hands and smeared with blood. The finger that was inside me also clearly has blood under the fingernail. Blood turns brown when it’s exposed to the air. So it looks more like crap or dirt. So my period-hands now look more like the dirty hands of a kid on a playground. I’ll nibble it all out from under my nails later.

I’m so sorry.

I pay with a bloody bill. Pleased that this bill will sooner or later make the rounds. […] Whenever I get a bill with blood on it, my first thought is always of a nose bloodied from snorting too much coke. A bit of blood often gets on the part of the rolled-up bill that was stuck into the nose. Bit of snot, bit of blood. Maybe I should rethink that. There’s more than one way to get blood on a bill.

Does anyone else not want to touch money ever again? I mean I know that money is pretty unsanitary as it is… but next time I get change for a twenty, I’m going to wonder if some weird young girl smeared her period all over it. Gah.

She drinks her coffee in the cafeteria, thinking about how to prolong her stay in the hospital. She thinks about how most people want to get out of the hospital as fast as they can, with the exception of maybe homeless people. She thinks about this homeless guy Willy downtown, that her mother says never to give money to because he’ll just spend it on drugs and alcohol. Whenever she was downtown she’d get really close to talk to him, and never smelled booze or saw him being all drugged out.

I believe him. So I stole some money out of mom’s purse and put it aside. Then the next time I went into town without mom, I gave it to him and told him it was from my mother. She sends her best. I told him he shouldn’t ever thank her, though, because she wouldn’t want it to seem as if she were seeking a public show of gratitude. He took her for a generous, humble lady rather than a hypocritical Christian.

And this is where I’m not sure if I want to punch or kiss Charlotte Roche for grossing me out so badly and then making my heart swell for Helen. She’s so weird and gross and damaged, but then she goes and does something like this and I can’t help but admire her. And the asshole in me thinks it’s hilarious and awesome that she gave him money on behalf of her mother, knowing that her mother actually is a hypocritical Christian and wouldn’t want to give him anything.

I also stole a sleeping bag, food, and clothing for Willy from home. As far as he knows, it all came from her. Whenever I walked past him with mom, he and I would look at each other briefly and then lower our gazes with knowing smiles.

Willy is probably happy when there’s something wrong with his leg or something so he can spend a night in the hospital.

It’s hard keeping up with her. Girl with fetish for spreading her blood and ass piss around for strangers to touch… has enough empathy for a homeless person to steal living supplies and money for him and wonder idly how much he would like to be in a hospital bed.

Helen thinks about how it would be great to be able to pay someone for their disease so she could stay in the hospital, but knows it isn’t possible. Much like how she wants to trade breasts with her friend Corinna.

Whenever I see the way her tits bulge out of a T-shirt, I want to trade. I picture the two of us going to the plastic surgeon and each having our breasts reattached on the other. […] It breaks my heart that something like that isn’t yet possible. And besides, I’d still have to ask Corinna whether she was cool with it. I couldn’t do it without her consent. Or maybe I could. But then I’d definitely lose her as a friend.

Note to self: If you’re friends with Helen Memel, beware of being forced into breast swapping surgery with her.

She chastises herself for thinking in circles and realizes that there are too many ‘inmates’ around to distract her. She also notices that her gut is starting to gurgle because of the coffee. She thinks about how she did a coffee piss-test one time.

[…] when you’ve pissed yourself empty in the morning, you can pretty much assume there’s basically no more pee left in your body. Now, if you drink a cup of coffee with breakfast, your body feels so poisoned that it leeches water from itself in order to wash out the poisonous drink as quickly as possible. You have to go to the bathroom as soon as you finish drinking it and piss out more fluid than you just drank in the form of coffee. I’ve confirmed this by using the coffee mug as a measuring cup. The pee always sloshes over the edge. So to the delight of my father I proved the dehydrating effect of coffee. My mother wasn’t pleased, though, because she doesn’t think urine belongs in a coffee mug.

No shit! If you’re doing a piss test, at least use a beaker or something.

Helen realizes that she might be soon having an emergency, so she gathers herself together and starts heading back to her room.

Just in the nick of time I remember that I got rid of my do-it-yourself tampon for the sake of a prank. I’m squeezing everything down there together as best as I can. […] Thanks to my pussy’s good musculature, I can hold blood in for quite a while. Then, when I sit on the toilet and relax my muscles, it all sloshes out of me at once.

I kinda wish I could do that.

She inspects the elevator and sees it’s now super clean, and then hurries as fast as her sore ass can take her back to her room.

I’m worried about what’s going to come out and how. I stand over the toilet bowl with my legs spread apart, pull the gauze plug out of my ass and let nature take its course. I don’t need to paint a picture,

Then don’t, please.

but it takes a while, hurts a lot, bleeds heavily, and now I’ve done it. The thing everyone here is waiting for me to do. But they’re never going to know.

She makes herself a new ass plug, and then airs out the bathroom by opening the window and turning the shower on. She does a smell test by going out in the hallway and re entering.

Mission accomplished. I turn off the water and make a new homemade tampon to handle my menstrual blood. Done.